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City to tear down 'dangerous' private home

Contractor currently waiting on results of asbestos testing on structure

By Jenni Grubbs

Times Staff Writer

Posted:
10/13/2017 06:55:15 PM MDT

The city of Fort Morgan has taken steps toward demolishing a privately owned building at 120½ West St. that not even the city's building inspector considers safe to enter anymore, let alone someone to live in it.

"Our building inspector has been over there on various occasions, and I think the most recent time refused to actually go into the building," City Manager Jeff Wells said, explaining that an exterior inspection portends a dangerous situation for anyone trying to enter the house.

But when the actual demolition will happen depends on the results of asbestos testing currently in process.

"I would expect we would know something by the end of October," Fort Morgan Public Works/Engineering Director Steve Glammeyer said.

In the meantime, the city is trying to keep people out of that structure, which has been identified as a nuisance.

In fact, concerns over the possibility of people taking up residence or seeking shelter inside this dilapidated building were part of what led the city to the year-long process for getting the building either fixed or demolished, according to Glammeyer.

"Staff has been working for some time to have this dangerous situation abated," he recently told the Fort Morgan City Council. "The building is uninhabitable at this point, and we have had no luck in getting the owner to do anything. Unfortunately at this point we've got no choice. We need to hire a contractor to have it taken care of."

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"I think at this point we don't want to delay any longer," Glammeyer said. "It's getting to be winter and I'm afraid somebody's going to get into this place and really get harmed if we don't take care of this as soon as we can."

The city received only one bid on the structure demolition, he said, with Nestor Excavating offering a $7,800 bid but a request for up to $9,700 in case of needing to clean out the structure or abate asbestos.

Councilman Dan Marler was curious about whether the property owner, listed as Soledad Olivas Garcia in city memos, had been paying taxes on the property, since the city had been unable to reach Garcia.

"Taxes get paid, as far as I understand when I looked at this several months ago," City Attorney Jason Meyers said. "But per the code, we have specific notice requirements that we're required to take. We followed the code as required, and ultimately what will happen is this will be a special assessment on the property and it will be collected as part of the property taxes."

Wells said removal of this building was part of what the city was doing to follow council's direction to address "dilapidated" properties that are "bringing down values in the community" and ensure the city would be clean and safe.

"For the last year, we've been trying to contact this absentee landowner to try and figure out what we can do to fix it," Wells said.

The council unanimously approved the bid, authorizing spending up to $9,700 to have the structure removed, and the cost will then be placed on the property as a lien, as per city code.

Neighbor's response

Mark Kincaid owns 120 West St., and his house abuts the property with the building that will be torn down. He told the Fort Morgan Times that he was pleased to hear that it will be demolished.

Kincaid said he wrote a letter to the city a while back about the nuisance the neighboring property was creating for him. He was concerned about overgrown weeds, many cats living there and squatters coming and going often.

"There's people breaking in all the time," he said.

That was not always the case, Kincaid said, with the owners having once lived there and taking care of the property and being good neighbors.

But he said that the man who owned the property had died, and his wife was now in a nursing home. As far as he knew, she has a son who lives in North Carolina, but no one had kept up the property for a long time.

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